"massive corporate boondoggles that sank millions or billions of dollars" In the billions? Those are very rare in the private sector and quite common in gover

"massive corporate boondoggles that sank millions or billions of dollars" In the billions? Those are very rare in the private sector and quite common in government. "Though we can never show it" No, you really can't, especially in light of how many private online services existed before the Intranet was fully opened up. "Private industry is notoriously short-sighted, and have absolutely no interest in the kinds of projects that DARPA (and government in general) can afford to focus on." Oddly enough, they manage to accomplish quite a bit of long-term work without throwing tens of billions at any given blue-sky project by one company. "BTW, 'a relative few of these military technologies turned out to be really useful' is a gigantic understatement." No, it is not. Most of DARPA's work has had no civilian application at all. That decades of work after DARPA made the Internet useful and that GPS was opened to civilian use doesn't change that simple fact. "As I said" As I said, myself.